The Coop

eBay (you may have to whether you wish to or not), half.com, yesasia.com, ncsx.com, ebgames.com, walmart.com... there are a good number of online places to look. Also, it might help things along if you told us what the games were.

Evaporative coolers are only worth the space they take up in dry climates. The moment the humidity level gets above 50%, they're basically just wasting your electricity, pumping even more moisture in the air, and making it more uncomfortable. They're great for mostly dry areas like the desert Southwest, but in the more moist regions like the East coast, they're not really going to offer you much help except on the occasional drier days. I'm not really sure what advice to give you, except to say that maybe there's a compromise that can be worked out with your landlord. Something like getting bars that bend outwards a bit more, so that you can put a second small air conditioner on the other side of the house.

So... would this be the second spambot thread from yesterday?

Glad I'm no the only one to think this was done by a spambot.

Not really. The Japanese ones have a good shot at appearing in Japan (or some tricky hackers might get some Japan shmups in The States), and the US ones, here. Someone wanted some shmups to play, and I offered very short opinions on ones that I felt would likely arrive (namely, the better ones) if Nintendo does things right and doesn't ignore the genre as the VC library grows. I planned for the future, and gave him a few (dozen) to possibly keep an eye out for The list isn't bad right now though. Xevious 7, Star Soldier 6, Gradius 8, and Galaga 8 for the NES is a good start, and R-Type III: The Third Lightning 9 and Gradius III 8 for the SNES are good choices as well. Bio-Hazard Battle 8 for the Genesis seems rather lonely given how many came out for the Genesis, and Super Star Soldier, R-Type 8, Soldier Blade, Ordyne, Dead Moon, Blazing Lasers and Air Zonk is a decent assortment of them for the TG-16. Hopefully they'll crank up the Genesis side of the genre soon, as there are a lot of good ones just waiting in the wings... both US and Japanese.

Well, what are the chances of Master System, Sega CD, 32X, Saturn, Dreamcast, PS1, PS2, GBA, GB/GBC, or even N64 shmups (all two or three of them) showing up on the VC? I can't post numbers for the TG-16 ones, as I was never fortunate enough to own that system (though I do play a decent number of the CD ones via Magic Engine, but they're not likely appear on the VC either). NES makes sense (in theory), but listing the rest here would just be a text bomb that doesn't apply to the thread topic, and likely wouldn't be appreciated. But, I'll post some numbers for the NES ones I've played in a bit. ... Unless of course you're just being sarcastic.

I just had to go on a tangent here, but what about all shmups period? A challenge, eh? Well, here's the rest that I can give personal experience "reviews" on for the Genesis and SNES... -=Genesis=- 6 Arrow Flash 5.5 Battle Squadron 6 Bioship Paladin * 5 Crossfire 8 Curse * 5 Dangerous Seed * 7 Darwin 4081 * 2 Divine Sealing * 9.5 Eliminate Down * 4 Fire Mustang * 9.5 GleyLancer * 6 Grind Stormer 5 Heavy Unit * 6 Insector X 3 Master of Weapons * 7.5 Sagaia + 7.5 Sol-Deace + 8.5 Super Fantasy Zone * 7 Super Space Invaders 7 Task Force Harrier EX + 7.5 Thunder Force II + 6 Trouble Shooter 6 Truxton 8 Twin Cobra + 8 Twin Hawk * 9 Undead Line * 6.5 Vapor Trail 6.5 Verytex * 2 XDR * 8 Zero Wing ** (special note: The PAL version of this one will play just fine on a US system. No Game Genie needed, and famously bad translation included.) -=SNES=- 7 Aero Fighters + 6.5 Blazeon 6 Darius Twin 3 Dimension Force 4 Raiden 4 Strike Gunner 6.5 Super Earth Defense Force 5 Super Nova += Forgot About *= Japanese Import **= European Import

I can't comment on them, as I've never owned a TG-16 or a Turbo Duo, so I've never played them. Some say Blazing Lasers is the best Hu-card shmup on the TG-16 though, with its version of R-Type being a very close second. Again, that's just what I've read over the years. I've never gotten to try them out.

Bio-Hazard Battle is the only one so far.

How can you hate RIII? WHUT DA HELL'S WRONG WITCHU?! Anyway, my thoughts on a number of the Genesis and SNES shmups... 9 Thunder Force III- Genesis 10 Lightning Force- Genesis 9 Steel Empire- Genesis 8 Gaiares- Genesis 9 Axelay- SNES 8 Space Megaforce- SNES 8 Whip Rush- Genesis 7 Vapor Trail- Genesis 8 Wings of Wor- Genesis 8 Super R-Type- SNES 7.5 Air Buster- Genesis 8.5 Elemental Master- Genesis 8 Fire Shark- Genesis 8 Hellfire- Genesis 8 Phelios- Genesis 8 Raiden Trad (Genesis) 8.5 Sub Terrania- Genesis 8.5 Granada- Genesis 7 Bio Metal- SNES 9 M.U.S.H.A.- Genesis 7.5 Sagaia- Genesis 7 Forgotten Worlds- Genesis 8 Biohazard Battle- Genesis 7 Phalanx- SNES 7 Fire Power 2000 8 UN Squadron- SNES 8 Viewpoint- Genesis And for the ones you played... 8 Gradius III 9 R-Type III: The Third Lightning 5 Thunder Spirits

Well, I can answer part of that... 1- The Gold membership for Live is $50 a year. This lets you do everything. However, every 360 comes with a permanent, free Live Silver package. You can't play online games (unless there's a weekend special or something), but you can still browse, get patches, chat online, buy classic games, etc. Check this out for more info. 2- Unless things have changed in the last few months, the PS3 hasn't gotten it's online stuff really going just yet. It's way too early to say "they do it for free", because they could just as easily decide the maintenance costs are too high, and start charging. If they do keep it free, great... that'll be a point in their favor. But until they're actually doing it, and offering XBox Live-level service, all for free, I wouldn't start looking at this as an argument against MS just yet. Time has yet to tell if what Sony says is indeed what happens. 3- The Wii doesn't have much of an online service yet. As such, they don't offer anything like what MS does, or what Sony plans to in terms of online gaming and services. They have the VC and friend codes and such, but it's not in the same league as what MS and Sony have/will have... for the moment. 4- Not sure what you're asking here.

Well, it's to be expected in any thread that's about a given company, system or game. No one can make a thread solely about how much they dislike Sony, MS or the big "N"... or even systems/games in general, be they past or present. They have a tendency to get locked after a short while in Gen Dis/Community (flames usually being the culprit). So, the only place to vent displeasure is in threads like this that are all encompassing. This type of thing always cycles through page after page of praise, then page after page of slams, and everything in-between. Just try not to let the down slopes get to you.

Somehow I missed this the first time through. The art work posted in here is quite nice... but uh, doesn't this kind of steer in the opposite direction of the whole "more professional" thing that was being bantered about a while back? The site has a logo, and even an unofficial (freeware) font of sorts. Somehow, giving the site its own Anime-esque character just seems a bit like a "me too" thing to do, given Anime's popularity, and the whole OS-tan, game system-tan, etc. thing. I can't quite put my finger on why, but it doesn't seem... fitting. Anyway, don't mean to be a wet blanket or anything, and God knows I'm sure I'll get at least a few "No one asked you" comments over this, but I felt the need to express my thoughts on it. I'll go put on my asbestos suit now.

C-C-C-C-COMBO BREAKER!

Right there, your paper's already off to an iffy start. It's not fairly widely accepted, but rather, it's very widely debated, with both sides pointing to studies and personal experience that they claim backs up their angle on the argument. There's been no consensus on this issue (be it regarding violence, personal mannerisms, or what have you), despite how many times it's been looked into by those pro and con. Edit: Try picking up the new EGM. They have a multi-page article on this subject in the August issue. It's nothing in-depth like a full blown study, but it does bring up a number of points on the issue.

I'm rather surprised this thread is still here, seeing as the first post is the type that usually gets deleted with, "If you're done, then just leave. Don't make a drama thread about it" commentary. As for the competitions, think about it... some of these things have been going on for quite a while in one form or another. Eventually, people simply get bored with it and move on. Plus, there are quite few of these things, which can easily be seen as driving the whole notion into the ground a bit by having too many going on at once. Perhaps it's time to give the whole competition thing a temporary rest, and let people have a break from it. It happened in UnMod a number of times, with things like the speed run tournament and the occasional score or art tournament. People just got tired of it when it ran for months on end... especially when Summer came around, and folks just wanted to go out and play (whatever that "play" may have entailed). Now I'm not saying the forum shift didn't play a hand in things by taking the competitions out of the "Community" public eye. It more than likely did. But, I don't believe that's the only culprit for the low attendance.

Was dat wiiwii necessewy? Dis fwead has just stawted to get a widdle wiidicuwous fanks to you.

This honestly isn't intended as trolling or anything, but for some reason, I get the distinct feeling that a lot of the best games on the Wii right now, were never actually made for the Wii.

Have you tried running it in DOSBox? According to their website, the game is fully supported. Grab the latest version from that website, and then go here for a tutorial on how to set up DOSBox. Also, should that not work, look into this SCUMM emulator, since that's what the game was programmed to run under. It's supposed to be 95% complete under that emulator. Edit: Or, just point and laugh at me for taking too long to type this up and get the links.